After graduating from Life Prep Academy in 2012, Wichita native Nick Rotola's trajectory has been anything but ordinary — from professional baseball to promoting cryptocurrency to starting up a new platform.
The former Oral Roberts University and Wingnuts player retired after a few professional seasons, but baseball and the entrepreneurial spirit were in his blood. Along with obtaining an MBA from his alma mater, he started a baseball camp and bat company.
Both remain active, and like his new startup, We3, are based out of Wichita.
Now, Rotola is ramping up to again become a marketer. He first tried his hand at viral marketing two years ago with blockchains, or decentralized currency.
Rotola said he made some money but left the business after a few months. Then in 2022, he and his friend and business partner, Corey Adams, a Wichita lawyer, opened Web3 on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The store focused on digital assets, including images and music.
After six months, the two partners closed the brick-and-mortar store, realizing it didn't need a storefront to succeed, but they needed to start again in a different format.
"Our Fifth Avenue pilot store brought in $1.4 million in sales in six months. The plan was just to test it," Rotola said. "We closed it because we realized that there are much better ways to scale the idea than having our own retail store. We decided we wanted to build something more sustainable."
They also wanted to go global. That's where the new concept We3 comes in.
A global internet platform business based in Wichita
Because of his past success, Rotola is ready to try his hand at a new venture — one that gives "influencers" a place to shine and make money.
He and his new business partner, Sebastian Harris, plan in April to launch We3. The two have assembled several backers, influencers and industry-leading marketers. Harris, who joined forces with Rotola in October, recently left a company he helped make public on the New York Stock Exchange.
The premise of We3 is to amplify creators or influencers, especially those in Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who Rotola said were feeling isolated even with the internet. By joining these creators in a community, he hopes to help them make money and become connected.
"Social-media companies promised to connect us, but they left us feeling only more alone," Rotola said of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. "I want to create a place where people can rally together — where algorithms can't stop them."
The business will put creator cubes in malls, starting in New York and Brazil, and eventually heading down to smaller cities like Wichita. The cubes will target influencers, asking them to scan the QR code on the cube. The company hopes to have "real" influencers pay a small monthly fee for the service and get economies of scale-type movement cast back to them in the way of payments and hits.
We3 stands for the platform, the creator and the brand. There are already two organizations named We3, a friend meet-up company based in Canada and an educational company in Colorado.
"This is a platform for creators to connect with brands and to connect with each other. It's a way for them to be popular without relying on the (social media) algorithm," he said. "We want to stockpile creators and have them grow their personal brand."
Rotola said a good mall in a major metropolitan city is where he hopes to find his target audience — the creators. Through the use of the creator cube, he hopes to get individuals in front of 30,000 people a day. Eventually, the team wants to pull in 5 million top-of-funnel creators.
After gathering those thousands of connections, the company hopes to find 50,000 strong creators who have at least 4,000 followers each. The end result — to make each person's brand propel. Rotola said a large percentage of the Gen Z audience frequents malls.
"A good mall has about 6.7 million Gen Z (visitors) per year," Rotola said. "This is a bottom-up solution for a top-down world. That's what Gen Z wants."
